When Sheila arrived to take Kyle home, Kyle was still stewing in anger. He couldn't believe he was still hung up on how Stan acted all that time ago.
He should just let go of it. Stan preferred his own version of events — that he was the only one that had any serious problems and that his super best friend just ditched him because Stan was just too depressing. The urge to defend himself from this point of view bubbled up in Kyle far too frequently. What was the point of bringing it up? Stan couldn't do anything about it now, and it would be too cruel to hit him with this when it wasn't even his fault.
It didn't matter if Stan kept asking for the truth. Kyle was pretty sure he didn't really want it. Because Kyle had tried multiple times to tell him, and Stan simply wouldn't hear it if the answer was not to his liking.
"Is everything okay?" His mother finally asked.
"Yeah."
"What did your father say to you?"
"Same thing as always."
Sheila grumbled about her own misgivings for a moment, but decided it was better to change to a cheerier subject. "By the way, your friend Eric came over. He offered to watch Ike while I got you."
"You left Ike with Cartman?"
"It's only for a little while."
The house remained intact and no ambulances or police cars had parked out front, so it was safe to assume that Cartman managed to avoid doing his absolute worst forms of influence. Kyle trudged upstairs and found Cartman seated in front of his laptop, while Ike supervised. Fortunately, Cartman had not gotten the password to unlock it.
"What are you doing?" Kyle asked dully. An absence of almost a full night of sleep was catching up to him. He lay down on his bed.
"Hacking into your computer. What's it look like?" Cartman stared at the screen with intense concentration. "Your bro won't tell me the password so I have to guess."
"The grasshopper has to learn on his own," Ike stated.
"So far, I tried Cartman_Is_Kewl, Cartman_Is_Awesome, SandyVagina, IHeartStan, Gay4Stan, Gay4StanMarsh, Gay4StanleyMarsh, I_Wanna_Suck_ Stan's_Balls-"
"How original. Get out of my room now."
"Wait, don't you want to know what I found out about that Libertin guy?"
Kyle raised his head. "You know about him?"
"Kenny told me. Because he's a friend," Cartman stressed. "But if you don't care that much-" He paused, waiting for Kyle to sink to his knees and beg or show some other dramatic gesture.
"I could figure it out by myself," Kyle bluffed.
"No, you couldn't. Not without my brilliance or Ike's mad skills."
It was not that long ago that Kyle would have blurted out the information he retrieved from the forefront of Cartman's mind. Now he recognized that performing that feat would only be a hollow victory, and even a costly one. Cartman had already picked up more clues about Kyle's recent talent than Kyle should have allowed, and, unlike Stan, Cartman would not blind himself to the more ridiculous options.
Kyle would just have to rely on Cartman's impatience. Cartman fidgeted. He was eager to share his knowledge and have his big moment. Ike, meanwhile, appeared uninterested in the topic. He had accessed the same knowledge, but he did not see why it mattered. He merely waited for the two older boys to finish their posturing about who was smarter — a contest that also did not matter to Ike because Ike was clearly smarter than both of them. Who cared who was the runner up?
Cartman finally broke the tense silence by snorting. "Fine. Last time I help you spy on your girlfriend."
That was bound to come out sooner or later. Kyle bit back any response about how dangerous Libertin could be. Cartman was not entirely trustworthy. He did not need to know anything about Bebe's life at home. Though, now, Cartman wondered if Bebe had become another one of Kyle's "strays" that Kyle felt compelled to help for some "nosy Jew" reason.
Overhearing Cartman had piqued Ike's interest enough for him to glance up from his screen. "Kyle has a girlfriend?"
"I do not."
"He wishes Bebe was his girlfriend," Cartman scoffed.
"Kyle has a girlfriend!" Ike sang out again.
"Unless you have something relevant to say, I'm kicking you both out." Kyle snapped back. "I've got stuff to do."
"What, like write in your gay diary?" Because Cartman always had to get in another jab. "Okay, fine. Simply put, the guy is a conman. If anyone looked into his impressive credentials from Brown, Dartmouth, Sorbonne — hehe, sore bone — they'd see that there's no record of him ever attending those schools. And all of his entrepreneurial enterprises only exist on paper. In fact, there's no independent confirmation that he even existed until about three or four years ago."
None of this was surprising. Kyle was at a loss to figure out the next step. He doubted any of this would be enough to persuade Bebe's mother that Libertin was bad business. She would overlook this stuff as long as he had money now.
"What about family?" He asked.
"There's more. The real Andre Libertin is some kid in Maine who died from meningitis at two years old. The standard way to adopt a new identity. I haven't found who the impersonatah really is." Cartman muttered to himself. "Too many surplus people in this world."
"Oh. Thanks, Cartman."
"You owe me. Owe me more, that is." Cartman stretched and flexed his hands. "I need a piss break. Be right back."
"Good thing you came to us," Ike chimed in. "This was easy, but I know how sloppy you are with covering your tracks. Safe enough from Mom and Dad, but not anyone who knows what they're doing."
"What are you getting at?" Kyle asked warily.
"Can't you tell, bro? You're supposed to be the psychic."
Kyle sprang up to perch at the end of the bed. Oh, Jesus. Ike was actually considering telling Mom and Dad. "You can't be serious."
"Mom said I'm not supposed to lie for you," Ike said, with faux angelic innocence.
"She didn't mean this."
"She said if you were doing anything dangerous. This counts. And you know? I've gotten used to you not being around. Things were a lot calmer when you weren't here. No more embarrassing dramatics. No more of you and Dad keeping secrets from us."
Kyle's pulse hammered faster. This had to be an act, because Ike couldn't really mean what he was saying. Not entirely. Ike's claims about how much better his family's life was without him exuded sincerity, and it was not new information. Kyle knew all the problems he had caused them.
Ike experienced a pang of conscience. Kyle from before would have tried to out-argue Ike until his voice grew hoarse and wore out completely. Kyle from before would not have simply given up like he did now.
"I'm not going to tell them," he told Kyle. "But I don't want to be left out anymore. You have to let me know what's going on."
The tension was interrupted by Cartman barging back into the room. "You need to get those lightbulbs checked," he commented. "Someone's going to have a seizure someday." He suddenly became aware that he had walked into a less than friendly situation. "What?"
Stan managed to avoid alcohol that evening, and he felt fine.
Actually, he felt like shit. But the fact that he had been able to last (he glanced at the clock) for eighteen hours without a drink proved he didn't have a drinking problem. Someone with a drinking problem would have broken down by now.
Still, being sober led him to lying awake in his dull, numb state of mind. The very same state of mind that had driven his friends away because it dragged them down. This wasn't something a therapist could fix. How could a therapist fix boring and unlikable?
With grueling effort, he shifted to his side and stared at the phone. Kyle had texted him an apology: he wasn't trying to push Stan into a decision he was uncomfortable with. They both knew that was a lie. Kyle had offered millions of apologies and take-backs, but that couldn't erase the truth of what Kyle said.
Stan hated these thoughts. They kept circling around his head, like accusing whispers. His fault. His fault. His fault. He was worthless. He had nobody. He would end up alone, and there was nothing he could do to change his fate.
He heard a low rumble beneath the buzzing chorus of taunts.
Outside the window, the sky was pitch dark.
The rumble grew louder, and Stan was able to distinguish the noise as a growl.
Sparky was growling.
"What is it, boy?" Stan mumbled, his curiosity reaching its maximum threshold within his energy level. He had no desire to raise his head to take a closer look outside the window, toward the direction Sparky was facing.
The barn lay out of sight from the angle where Stan currently lay. Stan did not know why he would be thinking of the barn. His concerns were too fixed in the past, despite the voiceless reminder that Tegridy Farms had created a big portion of his problems.
Sparky growled again. Stan could not recall ever hearing him growl at anything before, much less with this single-focused intensity. Like Stan, Sparky preferred not to confront possibly dangerous people or creatures. Not even when facing evil incarnate, in the forms of the Spookyfish or Damien, Son of Satan, did Sparky do anything beyond hide out of sight from them.
Sparky's growls did not let up until sunrise.